The remaining troll suddenly understood its dire situation and began to back off, starting to turn and run when a crossbow bolt came in from somewhere off to the side. The bolt hit the troll in the neck just below the troll’s ear, a stream of jet black blood squirting into the air. The troll stumbled, somehow still alive. It managed to stagger several more steps, falling to its knees half-dazed before Ironhelm caught up to the monster and ended its life with a single stroke from his axe. The battle over, Ironhelm turned towards the woods where the shot had come from. Flatfoot stepped out of the trees, his little crossbow in hand.
The gnome was grinning from ear-to-ear.
“Nice shot,” Ironhelm grunted.
“Had to rush it,” Flatfoot said, walking over and studying the dead troll. “Did the bloody trick, though.”
Jorn looked around, assessing the battle. Four trolls lay dead, and his companions all unharmed. All in all, it’d been an easy fight. Trolls were big creatures, but they were also stupid and clumsy.
Jorn sheathed his sword and looked over at Ailric. The knight was standing next to the troll he had slain.
“Unhorsed again, I see,” he remarked, holding back a grin.
Ailric said nothing, turning away.
“Ach! Now we’ve gone and done it, laddies!” Ironhelm growled, shaking his head. He walked over to the edge of the road, staring down the steep slope. “We need to get rid of these bodies.”
_____
It took a good deal of effort to push the trolls over the edge of the cliff. To make matters worse, the bodies only rolled so far down and remained within clear view of the road. Jorn and Willock had to scramble down, struggling to push the trolls further down the mountainside until the bodies were all well out of sight from the road above. Climbing back, Jorn saw that the others had pulled aside the wool covering atop the troll’s cart. Underneath were stacks of spears and swords.
“Weapons,” he observed.
“And not very good ones,” Ironhelm added, picking up one of the swords and examining it for a moment before tossing it back on the pile. “Gruk-make, by the look of it. Aye, garbage.”
“We’d better throw the whole thing over the side and get off the road once and for all,” Jorn said. “Grang’s teeth! We’ve been idiots to travel along it at all.”
A hundred feet along the road was a particularly sharp and steep section of cliff. They pushed the cart as hard as they could and sent it flying off the edge. Jorn watched with fascination as it fell through open air, smashing against a rocky outcrop sticking out from the cliff-face which sent it spinning end-over-end, swords and spears spilling out all over the place before the whole thing crashed into the tops of the pine trees a hundred feet further down. They could hear branches cracking as the cart fell through the trees and finally came to rest safely out of sight from the road.
“Now what?” Jorn said, looking back up the road.
“Down below are the marshes,” Ironhelm said. “We cannot follow tha’ path.”
“If we can’t go down, then we’ll go up,” Jorn said, turning and peering up the mountainside. “We can travel along the top ridge of the mountains almost the whole way, a thousand feet above the road and any random trolls. I seem to recall one of the Hammeredshield dwarves saying there was a high mountain trail running all the way.”
“What about the snow?” Ailric asked. “Won’t that deter us?”
“The snow is only at the very highest points of the ridge,” Jorn said, studying the towering mountains above. “And I do not think it is too deep yet.”
“Until the first real snowfall,” Willock observed. “Still, I don’t see how we have any other choice.”
“Well, that settles it,” Jorn said.
They turned their horses up the mountainside, leaving the road and climbing steadily for some distance. They found a small game trail a few hundred feet above the road. Willock, out in front of the party on foot, stopped and bent down suddenly. He carefully studied the ground in front of him, nodding silently. He examined the various animal tracks in front of him.
“Ibex, mostly,” Willock said, standing. “There are a few elk, too. It may lead us to the ridge, if we’re lucky.”
Willock was right, though it took the rest of the day to get to the great ridge running atop the line of mountains. The trail wound its way gradually upward, doubling back-and-forth steadily upward. The horses had a tough time of it, crossing over endless piles of rocks and tangles of twisted tree roots. The poor animals could only traverse the terrain at a very slow pace, and the afternoon began to wane as they climbed slowly towards the ridge. Finally, they emerged from the tree line just as the sun began to set. A few hundred yards later they stood atop the western ridge.
_____
It was a barren world above the trees, a desolate landscape of wind-worn rocks and boulders strewn all about. Here and there, patches ice that had survived the summer still clung to the ground waiting patiently to blanket the mountains in white again.
It was almost completely silent, there at what felt like the roof of the world.
The scene before Jorn was the very essence of grandeur. He could see all along the gently rolling ridge for miles in each direction north and south. Looking down, he saw the blankets of trees reaching all the way down to the valley floor thousands of feet below and the dark mass of the Nor Marshes. On the far side of the marshes rose the next ridge of the Great Barriers, rising still thousands of feet higher than the one they now stood upon. At the very edge of his vision was a still-higher ridge of towering peaks. The Teeth of Kaas, now clearly visible to the southwest, loomed over everything. Their snow-covered peaks gleamed in the waning afternoon sun as the last light of day reflected off their slopes.
Jorn turned away from the valley and looked eastward. He could see down into the Dwarven Freeholds for many miles beneath the ridge to both left and right. He figured he must now be directly west from the lands of the Chiseledstone Clan, the lands of the Silverspear Clan lands somewhere to the north off on Jorn’s left. To the south lay Glammonfore Keep, where Braemorgan would be waiting for them in four week’s time. The keep stood east of the Glammonfore Gap. Looking south, however, Jorn could see no such gap. He figured he could see about ten miles of the ridge, so the famed mountain pass had to be farther than that. They would probably reach it tomorrow, in any case, for the trail atop the ridge looked like easy travelling.
“How will we cross over the Glammonfore Gap?” Jorn wondered aloud.
“A trail runs down from the mountains on either side,” the dwarf said, climbing out of the saddle. “Aye, tis true.”
“You know the gap, then?”
“Tha’ I do, laddie,” Ironhelm said, turning and tending to his pony.
For Ironhelm, the Glammonfore Gap held nearly as many memories as the Widowing Gap. It was through the Glammonfore Gap that the Eagleblade had led the united armies towards the last great battles of the Great Mountain War. Ironhelm remembered it well, the mighty hosts marching through and then turning south towards the Citadel of Amundágor on the very southern edge of the valley. Its walls were breached after a battle of epic scale and the Eagleblade had it ripped apart stone by stone afterwards. It was now nothing more than a massive pile of rubble.
It was hard not to be reminded of it all, surrounded as Ironhelm was by the landmarks of the war. In the shadow of the Teeth of Kaas were fought the most ferocious battles of the war. Now those terrible stone fangs loomed tall against the setting sun, grim reminders of many a good dwarf cut down in their youth.
They made camp below the ridge, down at the edge of the trees, using a small cleft in the bare granite to shield them from the wind. The horses grazed nearby on the patches of tough grass growing wild. It was cold, but at least there were plenty of stones for Ronias to heat up. They pitched their tents in a circle around the stones, creating a zone of warmth and comfort.
Flatfoot was soon preparing dinner over the magically-glowing stones. He rummaged throu
gh their supplies, producing a portion of cured beef. Cutting it up, he threw it in the pot with plenty of water, some potatoes, a few carrots, and onions. He added a handful of pungent herbs and brought the concoction to a boil, stirring it carefully and then covering the whole thing up. He wished he had the time to make a proper stew, but that was hardly the stuff of trailside meals. A simple soup, however, packed with tender chunks of meat and plenty of potatoes, would do just fine.
“Now you be sure to boil until those potatoes are nice and soft,” he murmured to the pot, stirring it carefully. The others were still struggling with the tents or tending to the horses, but that was of no concern to him. As the duly-designated camp cook, that was none of his affair. He had the sole responsibility of providing dinner every evening. Dinner was duty enough, and that was fine with him.
Leaning back, he decided to have a pre-dinner smoke and took out his pipe. A minute later he was puffing away, treating himself to a sip of the whiskey from the flask tucked into his waistcoat. He drank it down and resumed enjoying the pipe, grateful he’d brought enough tobacco for the entire trip. Off to the side, Ironhelm yelled out some horrendous curse in Dwarvic as his tent, almost secured, suddenly blew over in another gust of wind. Flatfoot smiled slyly and watched the pot slowly heating up atop the glowing rocks.
This was shaping up to be a grand little adventure indeed.
_____
The next morning was the coldest they’d yet experienced. They huddled around the still-glowing rocks in the pre-dawn twilight, their bones gradually warming. Jorn, the only northerner among them, wasn’t bothered by the cold. He strode about the camp, talking of what a glorious day it was. Ronias, meanwhile, looked to be suffering the most, clutching his cloak tightly and shivering. His homeland never got nearly this cold, not even in the dead of winter. Why anyone but a brutal savage would choose to live amidst such horrible weather was simply beyond the elf.
“Another sleepless night, laddie?” Ironhelm said to Jorn as they ate a quick breakfast and packed up their things. The dwarf had arisen in the middle of the night for his turn of guard duty to find Jorn not yet ready to give up his post. Jorn sent him back to his tent, insisting he wasn’t in the least tired. Ironhelm did not argue with him, but regretted it now. Jorn would usually doze during the day when they stopped for a break or to have lunch. Sometimes the laddie would even manage to get half a night’s sleep. But there were many nights Jorn stayed up all the way through. Sooner or later the Linlunder would wear himself out, Ironhelm worried, and then he’d be of no use to anyone.
“It’s the wind,” Jorn muttered. “It never let up all night. I woke up Willock for his shift and managed a few hours. I’m fine.”
Flatfoot quickly got a pot of tea going and fried up some strips of salt pork mixed with a few potatoes chopped into tiny cubes so they would cook up quickly. It was greasy and bland, but it filled their stomachs and brought them all some measure of warmth as they set about another day.
“Do you suppose they’ve noticed the missing trolls yet?” Flatfoot wondered aloud as he cleaned up his pots and pans and packed them away.
“Maybe,” Ironhelm said, folding up his tent. “If they did, the mountain slopes down there’ll be crawling with gruks and trolls. Aye, tis true.”
“Perhaps,” Flatfoot said. “Yet perhaps not.”
“No riddles,” Ironhelm grumbled. “Just speak your mind.”
“Oh, its no riddle.” Flatfoot sipped his tea. “The enemy notices a shipment is missing and a party of trolls hasn’t arrived at its intended location. A thousand things could’ve happened. The trolls, being trolls and short on self-discipline and overall intelligence, might simply have run off or gotten lost. They may have taken a wrong turn, or decided the whole venture wasn’t worth a damn and deserted. They may have decided to take a few days off and are lounging about somewhere along the road.”
“I don’t think,” Flatfoot went on. “That the Cult would notice the missing wagon and at once conclude that an intrepid group of adventurers is on this side of the mountain ridge. That is, provided they notice them gone at all. Whoever is in charge of receiving the shipments at the camp might notice they are a cart short, if they are organized. In a dwarven army, I grant you, they’d quickly be aware a cart is missing. Even then, they’d usually assume it was late or that whoever was in charge at the supply depot screwed-up. An army of gruks and trolls might not even have the foggiest idea how many carts are supposed to arrive on any given day.”
“I hope you’re right, laddie,” Ironhelm said. “But they weren’t far behind the first group. No, not far at all. If tha’ other group gets to the camp and notices the others tha’ were right behind them are gone…”
“Good point,” Flatfoot admitted.
The camp was all packed up a few minutes later and they were back on the trail, the sun rising higher and the day growing warmer as the morning wore on. They followed the ridge south through fields of stone and sheets of white, gleaming ice.
Willock estimated they’d reach the Glammonfore Gap the next day. They could restock their supplies at the trading post inside the Keep. Willock would also write a formal report on what he’d observed in terms of enemy troop activity and submit it to the keep’s commander.
It was nearly midday when Flatfoot’s gnomish eyesight proved invaluable once again. They were plodding across a long sheet of snow atop a particularly high section of ridge, a thin layer of white no more than an inch or so thick, the monotonous crunch-crunch of hooves enough to drive them all insane as the hours wound by. Flatfoot, bored to tears after the grandeur of the view wore off, watched the wispy clouds above him drifting past. He tried to think of a game he could play in his mind with the clouds to pass the time, but was unable to come up with anything sufficiently diverting.
In the distance Flatfoot noticed a bird, perhaps the only bird he had seen all day now that he thought about it. He watched the bird, which looked to be flying more or less parallel to them, only it seemed to be keeping pace. It occurred to Flatfoot that either this bird was farther away then he thought or it was flying very slowly indeed.
He paused, absorbing the implications of what had he was seeing. If a flying bird appeared to be keeping pace with them, it had to be very far away indeed. That meant that if the bird was in fact some miles off and yet Flatfoot could still see it, it had to be of immense size.
“Willock!" he said, pointing in the direction of the distant bird. "What do you make of that bird over yonder?"
The woodsman glanced over at the bird and frowned, taking out his spyscope. He fixed it in the direction of the mysterious bird, putting his eye up to the lens and adjusting the focus. The creature came quickly into view and Willock almost dropped his spyscope in shock.
"Une save us!" he cried. "That's a dragon!"
“Grang’s teeth!” Jorn exclaimed.
“Tha’s nonsense,” Ironhelm snorting. “Dragons haven’t been seen so close to the frontier in centuries. Aye, tis true.”
Willock tossed Ironhelm the spyscope. The dwarf put it up to his eye and saw it all for himself. He saw the long snake-like body and the leathery wings. He could just barely make out the legs of the monstrous creature and the spiny ridges along its back. There was no mistaking it for what it was.
“A dragon,” Ironhelm said, lowering the spyscope. His face was ashen. “I don’t believe it.”
“It seems to be turning this way,” Flatfoot observed.
“We need to get off this ridge,” Willock said. “If it catches us out in the open we wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Jorn stared wide-eyed at the distant creature. When the gnome first pointed it out, it looked like nothing more than a distant squiggle against the vast blue sky. Already it was taking definite shape as it flew closer. It was hard to tell exactly how far off the dragon was, but it looked like it was still at least two mountain tops to the south, five or six miles. There was no question it was moving towards them, however, and quickly. Their f
orms must stand-out starkly against the whiteness of the frozen snow all around them.
Jorn turned his horse away from the dragon and glanced down the slope leading down towards the valley. It was steep and rocky, but nothing the horses couldn’t handle. Perhaps five hundred feet below was the tree-line, where there was cover.
“Grang’s teeth! Make for the trees!” he yelled, digging his spurs into the side of his horse and pointing it down the rocky slope. “Hurry!”
They rode the horses down the slope, dipping – at least for the moment – out of view of the dragon. The horses had a hard time with terrain, strewn all about with rocks as it was. Jorn and Ailric led the way, finding the smoothest path through the field of rocks until they finally hit a patch of barren granite. It was a small stroke of luck, a stretch of smooth stone mostly free of debris all the way down to the tree-line
Swiftly they rode, their horses charging down the steep slope as fast as they could manage. It was an agonizing series of moments, as Jorn imagined the dragon swooping closer to them with frightening swiftness. Perhaps it was even now diving down the ridge behind them. Far too slowly, the trees drew closer.
Then Jorn reached the trees. He pulled up hard on the horse’s reigns to try and slow the animal down, but its momentum was too great to stop so easily. It galloped ahead into the sea of pines, Jorn desperately trying to slow its pace. A thick branch hit him hard in the shoulder and he suddenly found himself on his back staring up at the treetops and the sky beyond. Groaning, he pulled himself to his feet and watched the horse still trotting down the hill.
The others all made it into the trees, Flatfoot nearly falling off his pony but somehow managing to stay in the saddle. Once the animals slowed down enough they brought them all to a halt and waited in anxious silence, watching the tree-tops. Jorn stood in their midst.
“These woods are thick,” Ronias whispered. “We should be out of sight.”
Child Of Storms (Volume 1) Page 41